Nickel and Dimed
April 28 – May 29, 2004 • Cleveland Public Theatre
By Joan Holden • Based on the book by Barbara Ehrenreich

Reviews

Plain Dealer
Saturday, May 1, 2004
A play about not getting by has a message to take home
By Tony Brown

Perhaps never in the history of Cleveland have so many affluent liberals from the eastern suburbs gathered together in one place after dark on the near West Side as are convening nightly at Cleveland Public Theatre’s Gordon Square Theatre.

The occasion is a historical collaboration between the theater and Great Lakes Theater Festival on a remarkable production of “Nickel and Dimed,” about an affluent liberal who sees what it’s like to work menial jobs for menial pay.

It opened Friday night after playing two preview performances. Surveys at the previews showed that most of the audience, Great Lakes subscribers, had never before been in the Gordon Square Theatre, a partly renovated 1912 vaudeville house in the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood. A cynic might be tempted to observe this is a case of an audience slumming to see the story of an author doing the same.

But having witnessed the Thursday night preview, I think something potentially more transformative might be happening here.

The play is based on the autobiographical book of the same title by Barbara Ehrenreich, a journalist who tried living on the wages of a waitress, an old-age home flunky, a house-cleaner and a Wal-Mart associate.

While revelatory, the book has an irritating habit of reminding us just how many academic degrees the author holds and which esteemed magazines have published her.

Playwright Joan Holden’s adaptation has its own problems. Chiefly, it is written as an illustrated lecture of sorts delivered to the audience by a character representing Ehrenreich. This and its episodic structure do not make it terribly dramatic.

It is something on the order of a miracle that Melissa Kievman, one of the wittiest, most inventive directors working in America today, could make this balky material fluid, entertaining and often laugh-out-loud funny.

With set designer Todd Krispinsky, Kievman sets the play in a square arena, with actors, stagehands, set pieces and props flying, gliding and otherwise materializing at all four corners. It’s a loose, in-your-face concept, and it works beautifully.

It does so largely because of the talents of the six-member ensemble, led by the gaminlike, eminently likable Jill Levin as our narrator, Barbara.

This is a huge role, easily the best work Levin has done in five seasons. She carries it off with a wry smile even in her character’s darkest hours, trekking from Florida to Maine to Minnesota to make $6.65 an hour.

But this is no one-woman show. It is a true ensemble effort, with the five other actors playing multiple roles, thanks in part to Ali Hernan’s quick-change costumes.

Nina Domingue simply amazes, disappearing into each of her separate creations, a hard-drinking (male) Hispanic cook, a tough single-mom maid and, most impressively, an impossibly slow, aged motel housekeeper.

Nan Wray brings a dose of warmth to each of her motherly roles. George Roth does most of the male parts, from a Czech immigrant to a numbers-obsessed Wal-Mart assistant manager, as well as one snooty female role, with aplomb aplenty.

Tracee Patterson switches from a restaurant hostess who sleeps in her car to a maid service “team leader” who refuses Barbara’s help. And Sheffia Randall is best as a Christian Wal-Mart associate who offers to take Barbara in.

In the most poignant of many such moments during the 150-minute play, Wray breaks character, barges onto the stage, interrupts Levin’s toilet-cleaning and engages the audience in a dialogue about what is a fair wage to pay to have your house cleaned.

After five minutes that could have come from “Oprah,” a disembodied voice from the tech booth upon high calls the proceedings back to order. Barbara eventually concludes that the advantages of the advantaged come at someone else’s disadvantage.

For many, this might not be a pleasant thing to hear. But deep in the bowels of an aging industrial city where economic disparity runs rampant and a recession still prevails, it is also potent and urgent and essential that we all hear it.

And we do so, loud and clear, in “Nickel and Dimed.”

© 2004 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.

Cleveland Free Times
Wednesday, May 5, 2004
Working for Change: A crisp, seamless adaptation of “Nickel and Dimed”
By James Damico

In warming up the opening-night audience for its co-production with Cleveland Public Theatre of Nickel and Dimed, Great Lakes Theater Festival’s affable artistic director Charles (“Call me Charlie”) Fee launched into a rashly audacious claim. “This is a historic occasion – two Cleveland theaters are collaborating to stage a single production for the first time…” Catching the dubious eyes and negative head wiggles of several old-timers in the audience, he paused only long enough to smoothly shift gears and amusingly save himself some friendly ribbing by adjusting his boast to: “For the first time… in at least the last year.”

If hardly plentiful, there have indeed been numerous past area co-productions, the last significant merger having been a three-year experiment between Dobama and Karamu from 1993 through ’95. But Fee does have a legitimate right to assert historical recognition, in that, while CPT has been a repeated associate with various local theatrical entities, GLTF is a virginal newcomer to the practice. The present trial is undoubtedly due to the enterprising Fee’s initiative, and it’s a hopefully fruitful model of exploration for all North Coast theaters struggling, as they have been for several years now, with the current inhospitable economic conditions for arts organizations. The fruit of this particular cooperative effort is an in-the-round staging of Joan Holden’s adaptation of Barbara Ehrenreich’s identically titled book (subtitled On (Not) Getting By In America), which details the author’s experiences working various minimum-wage jobs in widespread geographical locations across the U.S. Her purpose was to find out how the working poor of this country existed on pittance-an-hour paychecks. Her not unexpected answers were barely and not at all.

Holden has excerpted, literally and with little invention of her own, vignettes from Ehrenreich’s encounters with fellow workers and bosses in gigs as a Kenny’s (read Denny’s) waitress, a Mall-Mart (read Wal-Mart) salesperson, a budget-motel housekeeper, a nursing-home aide, and a cleaning service flunky. In each situation, Ehrenreich, who functions as the evening’s narrator, finds unsympathetic supervisors, driven by bottom-line demands and ownership, squeezing single-mom, multiple-job-holding, medically uninsured, chronically in-debt and desperate employees – largely, but hardly exclusively, minorities.

Both book and play lay great emphasis on how this ill-paid, professionally abused subclass of millions underpins our economy and how its plight calls out for immediate and complete redress. The piece fails, however, to suggest a means to do that. As sympathetic and even outraged as most of us are, beyond voting Bush out of office, what do we do? Boycott McDonald’s? Draw frowns on the Wal-Mart happy faces? Leave $50 tips under the remains of a Denny’s pancake breakfast?

Dramatically, this episodic string of brief sound and visual bites is repetitiously without shape and constructive rise and fall. In its polemical zeal, it’s at least a third longer than it need be to make its much-reiterated, and not really complex, point.

That said, the GLTF-CPT production is blessed with a trio of heaven-sent angels. Director Melissa Kievman and designer Todd Krispinsky have combined to make what might easily have been a tediously cumbersome evening into a completely fluid and mobile theatrical occasion. The multiple excerpts start and end crisply, and seamlessly merge with the precision of Swiss clockwork.

Angel Three is Jill Levin as the narrator. This lady has often displayed her winning charm, even sometimes when it was inappropriate to the endeavor at hand (as in CPT’s Summer and Smoke a few seasons back). But here, it’s impossible to calculate how long this extended exercise would have seemed without her ingratiating, sensible, wisely wry, quietly and amiably sexy, entirely rational feminine presence constantly and uninsistently bringing us back to the core of the piece. In its ingenuously engaging way, this is an exceptional performance.

The quintet of supporting actors, who assume dozens of characters, are more than admirable. Nina Domingue stands out as Hector, a tippling and foul-mouthed Denny’s cook, and a female, wisecracking Stepin Fetchit-slow housemaid. The constantly surprising and eminently talented Tracee Patterson parades her versatility with a classy-looking hostess who lives in her car and gets her prime duds from a thrift shop, and a ditzy, pregnant housecleaning crew chief who is fragile enough to flutter the flintiest heart. Nan Wray is especially and believably vulnerable as a man-famished waitress, and Sheffia Randall is most persuasive as a sympathetic, Jesus-loving, abused-wife, smiley Wal-Marter. As a majority of the men and one matron, George Roth is most affecting as a Czech immigrant busboy, who longs to learn English.

A footnote: CPT has employed the venerable Gordon Square Theater, which it praisefully saved from the wreckers’ ball, in any number of configurations. The present in-the-round one, however, is not the most auspicious. When players turned their backs to any particular section, they were largely inaudible. The corrective may be to use the space only in the standard proscenium or three-quarters arena modes. Whatever, the overriding idea is to please keep on using it.

Scene Magazine
Wednesday, May 5, 2004
Labor Intensive: Low-wage workers sweat and suffer in the excellent Nickel and Dimed
By Christine Howey

Almost everyone in the so-called middle class and above has worked at a menial job at some point – waiting tables in college or working at Kmart during summer break. And after they move on to other, more remunerative pursuits, those fortunate folk have the luxury of thinking back on their brutal employment experiences with a faint shudder of amazement, asking themselves, “How did I ever put up with all that bullshit for chump change?”

But when menial hourly employment is the only kind of work you can get to support your family, the issues become much more stark. How can a man earning $6 an hour put a deposit down on a decent living space? He can’t, so he has to spend more money to live in a marginally sanitary motel. How can a woman with similar income and young children afford day care? She can’t, so she turns her eight-year-old into a baby-sitter while she’s at work. The working poor and their plight in benignly indifferent America is the subject of Nickel and Dimed by Joan Holden – presented by Cleveland Public Theatre in association with the Great Lakes Theater Festival – a dramatic adaptation of Barbara Ehrenreich’s popular, identically titled nonfiction book. For one year, Ehrenreich embedded herself in the ranks of low-income workers, laboring as a waitress, a housecleaner, and a retail clerk to experience the workaday humiliations and the cash-flow challenges firsthand. And while her foray into desperate economic straits wasn’t entirely genuine (she held on to some emergency parachutes, including her ATM card), Ehrenreich was able to convey with telling immediacy the cruel conundrums of low-wage life. Holden’s reworking hews closely to the source material, which doesn’t always work dramatically. But this production sparkles like a restaurant’s well-scrubbed kitchen counter, thanks to imaginative direction by Melissa Kievman and an ever-inventive six-person cast. Jill Levin is perfectly believable as Barbara herself, narrating her experiences as she moves from Florida to Maine and then to Minnesota in search of the primary punch-clock sensibility. Along the way, she shares with her co-workers cigarette breaks (one of the few job perks, and even that generates tumors) and hatred of control-freak corporate bosses.

Director Kievman’s staging is continually involving from several perspectives. For one, she has created a theater-in-the-round space inside CPT’s Gordon Square facility, so that the audience can observe itself as well as the action in the center. Indeed, the working poor are curiously invisible most of the time, even when they’re standing next to us, and this production dissolves that barrier, if only for a couple of hours. The stage structure also suggests a Roman coliseum, where the privileged watch as doomed gladiators battle economically with capitalism’s beasts of prey. In addition, Kievman and scenic designer Todd S. Krispinsky keep the action moving by mounting virtually all set pieces on casters, wheeling them in and out as in a well-oiled roller derby.

But the supporting players, all of whom play multiple roles, furnish much of the sting of Ehrenreich’s discoveries and loads of the humor. George Roth is consistently surprising as, among other things, a barely fluent immigrant busboy, Barbara’s clueless husband, and a selection of grubby supervisors. Equally flexible and talented is Nina Domingue, as an aggressively comical Puerto Rican cook and a slow-talking, slow-walking hotel maid. Tracee Patterson etches a couple of memorable characters – in particular the sweet, helpful, but totally intimidated Holly, who is the pregnant “team leader” of the housecleaning crew. Nan Wray and Sheffia W. Randall also have fine moments as, respectively, a gimpy but game cleaning person and a born-again “Mall-Mart” shelf-stocker.

Since the play’s structure is so episodic, there is little opportunity for any real character development – a difficulty that is augmented by Barbara’s continually breaking character to comment on the proceedings. In fact, in the second act, the entire cast drops the fourth wall and has a brief talk-back with the audience about the patrons’ experiences cleaning houses or offices and their employing of others to do the same. This fragmentation means that, from time to time, Nickel and Dimed feels like loose change theatrically. Even with these minor quibbles and a dialogue pace that on this night was a bit spongy, the production is a triumph. Credit goes to CPT’s James Levin and GLTF’s Charles Fee for combining their companies’ imposing talents on such a worthy effort.

So, after all is said and done, who is to blame for the awful lives of the working poor? As one character revealingly explains, it’s no one’s fault. It’s all about the numbers: the profit numbers that drive corporations to deny their employees decent compensation and the bargain-price numbers that draw millions of customers through Wal-Mart’s smiley-face doors.

Cool Cleveland
Wednesday, May 5, 2004
Nickel and Dimed @ Gordon Square Theatre
By Tom Perrino

Rarely does theater deliver a performance that makes us laugh as well as provide us with the inspiration to make a difference. If the more than 200 people who came together for this Cleveland Public Theatre and Great Lakes Theatre Festival joint effort didn’t feel the jolt of witnessing something unique early in the show, if they didn’t leave with more than a few thoughts rolling around their heads and didn’t wake up with some of the same, I would challenge if they were indeed at the same production. The seats surrounding the square stage are nearly full when one of the crew casually places a folding tray stand and a plastic dish bin filled with plates, cups and saucers just off center stage. The house lights go down replaced by a single soft spot over the props. An uneasy anticipation drifts across the theater as we sense the oncoming confrontation with a secret life we hope will never be our misfortune to fully understand. “Bring It On!” says the CPT – and with this phenomenal cast and production they bring a combination of rolling laughter and a special “dare-you-to-look-away” emotion. With Nickel and Dimed, consider “It” brought. The Ohio premier is directed by Melissa Kievman and is based on the best selling book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by author, social critic and journalist Barbara Ehrenreich. Jill Levin plays Barbara, a divorced woman with grown children who embarks on an undercover journey as a minimum wage worker. Ms. Levin leads an enormously talented cast by portraying the competent but quickly overwhelmed Ehrenreich. Overwhelmed by her new life with its new and unusual set of rules and language, but definitely not overmatched when confronted by any human injustice. And there are many. Ms. Levin excels as the street smart New Yorker who finds herself playing a whole new game. She begins work in a restaurant intent on experiencing first hand the struggles of the working poor. As might be expected, she learns much more than how to wait tables, clean homes or stock shelves when she asks us “What makes human beings devour their own kind?” The cast (Nina Domingue, Tracee Patterson, Sheffia Randall, George Roth and Nan Wray) each play multiple characters with brilliant comic turns and deft human touches, earning far more than a paycheck for their performances. “How deep is the corrosive effect of humiliation?” is a question Barbara asks us. Each character has already faced this cruel reality struggling each moment of every day to find whatever defense mechanism they can to deflect these effects. The book is well written and helps the reader to quietly and personally contemplate the staggering human conditions more than 31 million Americans are helpless to avoid making $6-7 per hour. The stage production, marvelously adapted by Joan Holden, expects more from the audience and easily gives more. The set changes are fluid and quick, with the cast and crew working together to achieve the necessary result. Tables and chairs roll across the stage, costume changes are tossed to crew waiting in the wings. This unique staging, designed by Todd Krispinsky, enhances the experience and underscores the rolled up sleeves working theme. Even the intermission is announced with a tongue-in-cheek brusqueness when Barbara tells us we have a “ten minute break”. It is this eye for detail that helps entertain us (we are after all at the theater) but also creates awareness of those who must live this way, every day, in order to “get by”.

Please call 631-2727 for ticket information or visit the CPT web site www.cptonline.org. Also, visit the web site for more information about the community event series Not Getting By: Views on Working in America.

Akron Beacon Journal
Fine cast tells tale of working poor: Performers in joint Cleveland production vividly bring to life adaptation of ‘Nickel and Dimed’
By Denise Grollmus

Let’s put aside the image of the “starving artist” or the “struggling actor” for a moment and consider the reality that plagues millions of Americans every day – the desperate struggle of the “working poor.”

Nickel and Dimed, at Cleveland Public Theatre through May 29, is Joan Holden’s adaptation of Barbara Ehrenreich’s best-selling book that encourages the middle and upper-middle class to consider the harsh working-class reality of not getting by on your salary. In collaboration with the Great Lakes Theater Festival, Nickel and Dimed is presented in a sparse theater-in-the-round setting where a superb cast of six brings to life Ehrenreich’s real experiences of trying to survive off everything from waitressing and cleaning houses to being a “Mall Mart” clerk.

Jill Levin plays Ehrenreich with the intelligent charm of a slender Woody Allen heroine who’s “radical, not post-feminist,” as Levin reminds the audience.

Her witty, verbose and often caustic monologues are colored by dramatic anecdotes, performed by a cast of versatile actors who constantly enter and exit the stage as the numerous characters who touched Ehrenreich’s life during her yearlong experiment.

While Sheffia Randall brings Phillip, the evil restaurant manager, to life with perfect self-righteousness, Nan Wray makes hilarious and sympathetic characters out of Ehrenreich’s words; Nina Domingue develops Carlie into laugh-out-loud comic relief; Tracee Patterson balances Holly’s lighthearted ditziness with complex inner turmoil; and George Roth quickly morphs from pimp-likened bosses and Ehrenreich’s yuppie husband to numerous struggling males and one bourgeoisie boob.

The only real issue with the play is its tedious length (2½ hours, not including a 10-minute intermission). However, with so much amazing material, it’s understandable why Holden felt the need to include almost every detail, minor and major, of Ehrenreich’s impeccable work. As Levin and the cast segue in and out of Ehrenreich’s awakening, their greatest accomplishment is implicating the audience in their own association with the exploitation of the working class. At one point, the actors take a Brechtian break, exposing their own place within the system, and making time for a quick midshow Q&A that gets the audience involved and localizes the issue in a way that Ehrenreich’s original book simply can’t.

Most important, Levin fully captures Ehrenreich’s most personal journey from self-righteous writer to her final breakdown under Mall Mart’s fluorescent lights, where intellectual pining and “I deserve what I have, I worked for it” statements don’t mean a thing.

If you want a taste of “real life,” head up to the Cleveland Public Theatre… and during intermission, tip the barista, please.

Photos: Nickel and Dimed

Jill Levin as Barbara, combs the want ads searching for employment in the Cleveland Public Theatre/Great Lakes Theater Festival joint production of “Nickel and Dimed.” Photo by Todd Krispinsky		Jill Levin as Barbara discusses the difficulty of finding affordable apartment accommodations in the Cleveland Public Theatre/Great Lakes Theater Festival production of “Nickel and Dimed.” Photo by Todd Krispinsky
Jill Levin stars as Barbara (center standing) in the CPT/GLTF joint production of “Nickel and Dimed.” Surrounding her are Tracee Patterson (left), George Roth (center) and Nina Domingue (right). Photo by Todd Krispinsky		Jill Levin plays Barbara and Nina Domingue portrays Carlie in the Cleveland Public Theatre/Great Lakes Theater Festival production of “Nickel and Dimed.” Photo by Todd Krispinsky